Daily Prayer

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Paul writes – Len Hjalmarson’s reflection is ‘scratching’ where I’m itching “Speaking Christianly in Babel” – part 1 and 2. The paper he’s referring to is one that he kindly e-mailed to me recently. Interestingly it appeared in a NZ journal (Stimulus), an issue which somehow I missed. You can read a brief bio of Dan here (scroll down) – he’s workshopping at a conference in March 09 alongside some of my theological heroes: Stanley Hauerwas, Walter Wink, Brian Walsh, and Sylvia Keesmaat. If I lived closer to Oakville, Ontario I’d be there with bells on. Those there will be exploring some important missiological themes.

“Within the contemporary western Church talk about mission is often dominated by strategising. The Church, driven by a pragmatism that is itself definitive of western culture, searches for the strategy that will cause mass conversion. If the right strategy, if the right words, can be found then revival will occur. The good news must be translated into the language of the culture so that it can be accessible, and so that the ranks of a dying Church can be swelled.

“This article will argue that missional strategies that present the Christian gospel in language that is understandable to western culture are bound to fail. When the Church uses the language of western culture to proclaim the gospel, cultural definitions co-opt the Christian meaning and the only result can be cultural Christianity. Moreover, within the contemporary society, language has been significantly devalued and Christian attempts to speak culturally are merely surrendering to, and participating within, the structures of Babel.

“Therefore, if the western Church hopes to be missional, it must learn to speak Christianly in the midst of Babel. Instead of changing the gospel message the Church must proclaim the gospel in its original form and allow the way it lives to interpret that message. The Christian message cannot simply be employed to provide Christian living with cultural approval. Instead Christian living, coupled with faith in the Holy Spirit, ought to provide the content and meaning of the Christian message. When Christianity is proclaimed in this way then the Church will be equipped to reveal a radical new way of being human in the midst of a western culture dominated by the idols of free-market capitalism…

“It is the indwelling and embodiment of the Christian story that makes it comprehensible (and perhaps even appealing) to society. It is the actions of the Christian community that exegete the Christian message.”

Wednesday, 24 December 2008

Paul and Alan write - It’s the start of “Christmas Eve” here (a warm but rainy summer morning in Cambridge) at the bottom of the world, so here’s wishing those due to catch up with us in the next day or so, and all those who have journeyed with us @ Prodigalkiwi(s) over the course of 2008, a peaceful and joyous Christmas from Alan and I.

We’ve loved the thoughtful comments and the e-mails. We’ve appreciated those who’ve engaged with us, and those who have gifted us with something of their own faith-journey, experiences, creativity and learning.We’ve really appreciated the sense of community; of being on a journey in the company of so many other interesting wayfarers. We toast you and thank you.

Merry Christmas and all the very very best to you and those you share your life with.

"May the Feast of Christmas be Good News, a time of Peace and a time of Joy to you and your loved ones."

Tuesday, 23 December 2008

Paul writes – With all the pace and busyness of this time of the year Ithought I’d offer a little reflection on prayer and a link to Simon Carey Holt’s poston the “silence of angels”.

In a 2003 as part of an interview with Charles Moore, Rowan Williams was asked to offer some advice on prayer:

“The thing I would like to say first is that it doesn't much matter at first how much time you can give so long as you can give some regular time.

The challenge is to find enough time to become quiet enough and still enough. And all the things about the need to attend to your body is not about exotic yoga techniques. It is how do you use your body in such a way that you can actually centre it to be where you are.

Somebody once said that the deepest problem in prayer is often not the absence of God but the absence of me. I'm not actually there. My mind is everywhere. So take a few deep breaths, use a simple formula like the Orthodox, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy', and sense in that that the line is anchored somewhere in the depths.

…Familiar formulae and the rhythms that come naturally actually matter quite a lot and I've sometimes advised people to try to find a verse of a hymn that means something to them or just a single phrase. It doesn't have to be the Orthodox formula that I mentioned.

It can be 'Jesu, Lover of my Soul, Let me to thy Bosom Fly', or

'Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise'. Things that people only half remember but phrases that stick and, if you let them, sit in your mind, that's a beginning of being there. And when you are there God can relate to you. God cannot speak to you if you are not actually there…”

Sunday, 21 December 2008

Paul writes – I recently read an interesting article on poet, writer, “writer’s mentor” Bill Manhire. In it Manhire reflects on his upbringing in a family owned (I’m presuming) pub and the relationship between that experience and teaching others to write. The author of the article writes:

“…He paints a picture of a barman as a good listener who nudges the conversation. Many customers, having had “one or two too many” talked about their personal lives in unguarded ways and the barman developed impulses or behaviour that became quite useful when encouraging people who want to write. ‘You don’t run the conversation. You just occasionally intervened, or prodded’…”

Now while not an exact approximation of the role of a spiritual director (where, for example, is the importance of listening for and noticing the Spirit @ work?) I like the sense it conveys of the importance of listening, nudging the conversation, not running the conversation, occasionally intervening or prodding by way of a question…

For an excellent introduction to the practice of Spiritual Direction, I can do no better than point you in the direction of the excellent (recently published) Spiritual Direction: A Practical Introductionby NZ Anglican Priest, Sue Pickering. While I’ve yet to read it, and thus to offer a more substantial review (will appear on this blog in due course); I have it, have read sections of it, and have generally had a really good look through it. It has a great bibliography too. The latest issue of NZ publication REFRESH has a review of the book written by Andrew Dunn. Andrew concludes his brief review with these words:

“…For those for whom this is their ministry there is much to stretch, encourage and strengthen. For those seeking to deepen pastoral ministry there is much to inspire and encourage. Thank you Sue…”

The whole issue of Refreshis available online as a PDF. The theme is “Earth and Spirit”. It has some excellent articles, including one by a great friend of mine, Andrew Shepherd. He interacts with Brian Walsh’s most recent book (co-written with Steven Bouma-Prediger) – Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement. His introductory insights on the property market are thought-provoking. Another “standout” reflection for me in this issue was Andrew Dunn’s “Creation and Contemplation: The Invisible Duo”.

Friday, 19 December 2008

Paul writes – In response to this post, I received a nice e-mail from the Rev’d Dr. Andrew Davison (Tutor in Christian Doctrine, St Stephen's House, Oxford, Junior Chaplain, Merton College, Oxford) this morning. Because Archbishop Rowan Williams’ Coventry address in being published in a collection of essays (by a range of contributors) it has been removed from his website. Sorry. That means the link no longer works.

The Church is the work of the Incarnation of Christ,it is the Incarnation itself.

Sergius Bulgakov

Andrew let me know that there will be an interesting conference on at Oxford

in early 2009, one he’s helping organise. Details here. Speakers include: John Millbank, Alistair McGrath etc. The focus of the conference below. The quote from Bulgakov is on their conference website. It’s excellent – a nice little summary of a recent series of posts I wrote.

“The conference is chiefly focused upon the Church of England, but with the conviction that its mission and identity are only truly to be understood as part of the universal Church. Here too, attention to theology is helpful: at the end of a century that saw ecumenism born and then wane, one of its most striking successes is in academic theology, which is now a thoroughly ecumenical endeavour. In the face of divisions among catholic-minded Anglicans, the conference is for all who identify the roots and future of the Church in its catholicity…”

Thursday, 18 December 2008

Paul writes – Continuing parts 1 and 2. Another way to put this might be to express concern for the ways the witness of a local church community often can undermine the “good news”; or worse still, obstruct “good news” by being in effect something significantly “less” than what the church is called to be and do. Now, the standard is not “perfection”, nor are “church” and “kingdom” synonymous, but surely there is a need to ensure we are intentional in becoming, by means of the Spirit, “the body language of God” – a reality that is also borne witness to in our dispersion. A significant dimension of the “good news” should surely be to point toward the Church – the “body of Christ” on the way toward , but not having arrived at the full stature of Christ – just as Jesus was the one to whom his disciples pointed in their sentness...?

Practically then this has implications for say "church planting" or the renewal and transformation of existing congregations. It’s to honour and work with the belief that “the future of God is amongst the [established] people of God”. The corollary or question then becomes not "how might we be or do church" but rather, "we are church, what then are the responsibilities and implications for ministry, (discipleship)formation, worship and mission"... Perhaps I'm making too subtle a distinction?

I guess I want to centre "incarnation" on church as a reforming and renewing challenge (which may include parallel congregations, church plants etc), and then begin to wonder about "incarnation" in terms of response to the invitation of the Spirit to embody and enact gospel in our dispersedness (“the mission of God is what God’s people are doing [and who they are in the ordinary and the everyday]...”)

I think it’s equally "missional" to be deeply concerned about how we are church (our freeing, liberating, and becoming ways of relating to God, self, and each other (cf. see how they love one another! - another hat tip to your Cavanaugh quote...). This too I think honours the desire of so many to think in terms of the need for so-called Nu-Monastic (communities of recovery, preservation, embodiment, enacting, creativity and mission in what Alistair MacIntyre has described as our contemporary "dark ages".

Now, as I said at the beginning, this is my own wondering, and I remain very open to the reality that learning and reflection is a journey, that I might be mistaken in what I am naming as points of tension for me, or my reading of what I see in Len’s reflection.

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Paul writes – continuing on from yesterday, I tried to get at what I was struggling with (and what Len’s post triggered for me) in an e-mail to Len (in an edited form below). The e-mail was more for me, as it was a (positive) reaction to what I was reading

Hi Len

I’m writing to say that I found your comments regards "incarnation" and the shorthand "Christology - Mission - Church" (see above) really helpful. I'm not sure I'm reading it as you intended, but I must say I'm increasingly trying to articulate a tension I feel around how we are using "incarnation" missionally... incarnation as centering on our "sentness" or being in the world; rather than incarnation as "embodiment" - the embodiment of "good news", making disciples, and how we (local churches) are “good news” in the midst of, and “among” our community. Your Cavanaugh quote gets at what I mean (see this post, and an earlier one), as does his paper, The Church as God's Body Language from which you take the quote.

The church is distinct, and in its distinctiveness both “attractional” (gathering) and “dispersed” (sending). The church is distinct, a “contrast society” yet it is also deeply involved in society and the world at large.

Rowan Williams, likewise, captures one side of the tension I feel, in a 2003 interview:

“…Hang around with the representatives of one or other religious tradition – share the experiences of worship, entertain the images, the stories they tell. Look at the lives they point to as important lives, important saints, figures in their tradition: because it is profoundly true that the religious apprehension is caught, not taught…”

For me then my wondering is around the current preferencing of "going" (e.g. Luke 10:1-12) rather than "being" (and in many ways Frost & Hirsch precipitated this former emphasis - an emphasis on "sentness"; of churches "going" rather than settling for being "attractional" (cf. The Shaping of Things to Come). Should "mission" (going) be prior to ecclesiology as many emphasise – “sentness” and “mission”? Or should the priority centre on the formation of identity and distinctiveness (i.e. discipleship and churches as communities of transformation and formation and (redemptive) cultural engagement)? Here I’m thinking of the work of the likes of Kenneth Leech, William Stringfellow, William Cavanaugh, Stanley Hauerwas, and maybe Walter Brueggemann with their emphasis often centered on the Church as embodying a counter-narrative, and being a subversive presence for the sake of love, faithfulness, hope, reconciliation and justice.

I want to hold them both (“ecclesiology” and “missiology”) as necessary, but I often find myself wanting to prioriterise “ecclesiology” (who we are and how we are the New Covenant people of God) ahead of missiology – the dispersed participation of all a churches members in God’s mission. In other words I want to emphasise “gathering” (and the significant work of grappling with what it means to be church and how we are church) ahead of “sentness” which I see as a corollary or extension of who we are.

Now this could just be the Anglican/Catholic in me, but I keep wanting to preference ecclesiology - church (community) where the good news / Jesus way is embodied, enacted (in relation to God, self and others) and then dispersed with the mission of God centering on the ordinary and everyday work and presence of (for example) a local congregation in a particular social-geographical location...I don’t want to start at the point of “dispersion” and I do want to say that the church has of necessity to be “attractional”. I don’t want to polarise emphases that need to be held together.

“...So let’s consider for a moment the shorthand that we see everywhere:

Christology → mission → church

I am convinced that incarnation alone, and even mission and incarnation, are insufficient lenses to challenge our cultural frames. If we do not move beyond this monism to a Trinitarian exploration, we will merely reinforce the individualism that subverts Christian formation.

With the frame above... Christology → mission... I feel we will end up with... Jesus is sent... I am sent... out to convert discrete individuals who will become independent believers with no ability to submit to the body. Our dominant lenses and dominant ethic will not be challenged. It won’t matter that Jesus chose twelve; we can write that off to methodology...”

What reading this did for me was to start me wondering about a tension I’m increasingly feeling. The tension between ecclesiology and missiology. The tension between church as “attractional” and “sent”. The tension between prioriterising “mission” ahead of (and often seemingly “against”) ecclesiology – who we are as church, and how we are church. I wonder if the prior missional question is “how are we being invited to embody, practically and visibly, “good news” and eschatological hope...?” To some degree I feel an urge to change the diagram above to:

Christology

"Church"Mission

The church becomes a living gospel text which is itself (and of itself) missional while also missionary in its diverse engagements withand in a range of contexts as diverse as its membership.

My observation is (often) that these distinctives often become polemical (either / or) rather than “both / and”. So, for example, a passage like Luke 10:1-12 (a story about “sentness”) becomes isolated from the larger biblical narrative about a people called to a distinctive way of being in and for the world as a result of a specific relationship (“in Christ”) and thus (new)identity (cf. Jn 17; 1Jn.). “Sentness” becomes the more important “missional” challenge rather than how and who were are “in” and “over-and-against” culture. In other words, “sentness” often becomes more pressing than “distinctiveness”.

Now, at this point I also need to say, that this “tension” is both a difficult and a needful place to be, for things are seldom and “either/or” scenario as evidenced by this statement from Stuart Murray (thanks to Len for bringing it to my attention recently):

“The Anabaptist writer and practitioner, Stuart Murray Williams, has been the most trenchant critic of the tendency of older church plants to copy the outward forms and style of their sending church, without asking whether the new mission context was different. This can result in failure to let the shape and form of the new church be determined by the mission context for which it was intended. The call for new kinds of churches can become subverted into the production of MORE churches.”

Monday, 15 December 2008

Paul writes – The Church Times recently included an interesting article by CofE Rev’d Jennie Hogan. The piece is titled “Truly Catholic and Truly Fresh”. You can read it here (PDF).

Here’s an excerpt:

“…Anglo-catholic clergy often ponder: what exactly is a Fresh Expression? Could it be benediction using a gong instead of sanctuary bells? Cynical laughs often follow. Fresh Expressions is sometimes perceived as a silly campaign dreamt up by Church House civil servants on a Friday afternoon. For many, it would appear that, liturgically speaking, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Yet if anyone dares to ask how many people turn up for the mass on Sunday, the laughs fade, and the familiar anxiety reappears. But Fresh Expressions — contemplative prayer with art, compline with chanting, solemn mass using new images and new music — is liturgy re-viewed and re-newed. The timelessness of the sacraments is embedded in the up-to-date, and Christianity becomes engaging and relevant to people’s lives…”

Also out next May is a book – Ancient Faith, Future Mission: Fresh Expressions in the Sacramental Traditions (Paperback) – edited by Stephen Croft and Ian Mobsby. It is a new multi-authored book exploring fresh expressions of church from the catholic and contemplative traditions. It is being published by Canterbury Press. It is likely to include chapters from: Archbishop Rowan Williams (this address), Abbot Stuart of Burford Priory, Bishop Stephen Cottrell, Steven Croft, Phyllis Tickle, Brian McLaren, Tessa Holland & Philip Roderick, Simon Rundell, Ian Adams & Ian Mobsby, Carl Turner, Sue Wallace, Karen Ward, Page Blair (of U2charist fame) and Canon Richard Giles.

For those of us with a more sacramental leaning it will hopefully be a very interesting and encouraging read.

Sunday, 14 December 2008

Paul writes – Speaking of Faith recently (December 11, 2008) featured one of the big influencers and shapers of my spiritual formation – Parker J. Palmer. His books and writing have been profoundly helpful to myself and a good number of people I know. The interview with Krista Tippett is promoted with the following paragraph:

“…Coverage of the unfolding economic crisis is often framed in terms of recklessness and irresponsibility, predators and victims, greed and gullibility. We continue our "Repossessing Virtue" series with Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer. He works with people from all walks of life at the intersection of spiritual, professional, and social change. He believes now, as much as ever before, we must acknowledge that the inner life of human beings is a source of reality and power…”

You can listen to interview and get more information, here. The Mp3 is downloadable.